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Making Talks Function in Latest Versions of Browsers
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Re-Editing Talks So The Slide Flips Function in Mozilla 1.x / Netscape 7
aaron walburg, 23 Dec 2002
Last updated: 27 Dec 2002

This procedure is used to edit our ASF files so that the talks will function in Mozilla 1.x, Netscape 7.0 as well as IE 6.0+

1. Make a local copy of the talk directory from:

\\gigavault\wwwroot\gsrc\talks\year\location

Save one unaltered copy (in case a complete reverersal is required) then created a second local copy to work on. Once the newly edited talks are successfully running on Gigavault, then both local copies can be deleted.

2. Start the Windows Media File Editor (version 9.00.00.2926) and open the asf you would like to edit. In order to open .asf files you will need to scroll through the "Files of type:" and select "ASF Files (*.asf)"

3. From the file menu select "Move scripts to Header". You will be prompted to create a new file. Select "ASF File" from the "Save as type:" menu, and save the new file as "xx-new.asf", with xx representing the numbered file name. This creates a new file which has the script information in the header of the file.

4. From the file menu select "Export header file..." Save the file as "slide-times.TXT". It will default to the proper location (i.e. the directory you are working in).

5. Open the newly generated text file ("slide-times.TXT") in notepad or WordPad.

6. Edit the URL's called in the script commands using the "edit>replace..." command. For instance, you might see the following:


<Scripts >
<Script Type="URL"
Command="http://10.0.0.11/gsrc/talks/2002/neworleans/01/01/slide2.gif"
Time="475260000" />
<Script Type="URL"
Command="http://10.0.0.11/gsrc/talks/2002/neworleans/01/01/slide3.gif"
Time="2004020000" />
<Script Type="URL"
Command="http://10.0.0.11/gsrc/talks/2002/neworleans/01/01/slide4.gif"
Time="3204760000" />

You will want to change all of the URLs so that they look something like:


<Scripts >
<Script Type="URL"
Command="11/slide2.gif"
Time="475260000" />
<Script Type="URL"
Command="11/slide3.gif"
Time="2004020000" />
<Script Type="URL"
Command="11/slide4.gif"
Time="3204760000" />


The URL you will be altering to depends entirely on the name of the directory of each specific talk. If the talk is in File "11", then that's the name of the file it should be directed at.

NOTE: Some of the browsers do not like to be stepped back in their referencing. For instance, a relative pathname like ../../01/01/slide2.gif will not function in certain browsers, for this reason the Slides themselves will likely need to be moved into the inner directory of each talk and the link made as simple as possible, for example "11/slide2.gif". Confused? Here's the history: In order to achieve a smooth transistion between speakers the talks are merged. In general the merged talks occupy the first few directories, say 01, 02, and 03.(This is not necessarily true in earlier talks, which may be numbered without such order) Each individual speaker also has his/her own directory which serves as the primary location for talk-specific files, like html versions, PDF versions, etc. The individual's directories begin at directory #11, 12, 13, etc. (This is not necessarily true in earlier talks, which may be numbered without such order). When the talks were originally placed online, the ASF files were edited down for each speaker and placed in the individual's own directory; however the slide flips would point to the slides within the merged talk directory. So a talk for Jan Rabaey might be inside directory 12, and when played online it would search for the .gif slide images 1.gif-14.gif inside of directory 01/01. Alberto's ASF would then reside in 13 and call for slides 15.gif-40.gif inside of 01/01 directory. Only 3-5 talks can be successfully merged before the ASF files become cumbersome, so once a file became too cumbersome a new merging was made and a new directory created, thus talks following Alberto, might be grouped together into directory 02. For instance Randy Bryant might follow Alberto, his talk, "14.asf" would be placed into directory 14 and his asf file would retrieve the GIF files Slide1.gif-Slide18.gif from the 02/02 directory. Tim Cheng spoke next and his asf file, "15.asf" would access the GIF files Slide19.gif through Slide 38.gif in the 02/02 directory. In order to re-edit the asf files so that all the browsers can easily locate the GIF images, the GIF files need to be copied into the individual's talk file, and the Header Script command also requires editing so that it correctly locates the moved GIF files. So after the header is edited (as above) you will need to copy corresponding GIF files into the speaker's individual file, for instance, in the case of Tim Cheng above, moving the gif files "Slide19.gif" through "Slide38.gif" from the 02/02 directory into the 15/15 directory. Additionally, the Slide prior to the first one mentioned in the header script will usually need to be moved, in this case, "Slide 18.gif." This is because the initial image is often not mentioned in the header. So now to step 7.

7. Another edit you will need to make to the header is adding the initial slide flip which always begins at Time="0"

Before Change:

<Scripts >
<Script Type="URL"
Command="11/slide2.gif"
Time="475260000" />
<Script Type="URL"
Command="11/slide3.gif"
Time="2004020000" />
<Script Type="URL"
Command="11/slide4.gif"
Time="3204760000" />

After Change:

<Scripts >
<Script Type="URL"
Command="11/slide1.gif"
Time="0" />

<Script Type="URL"
Command="11/slide2.gif"
Time="475260000" />
<Script Type="URL"
Command="11/slide3.gif"
Time="2004020000" />
<Script Type="URL"
Command="11/slide4.gif"
Time="3204760000" />


8. Once the Header text file is edited you will then re-open the original ASF file in the Windows Media File Editor program and import the edited header file, using the "Import header file…" command from the file menu. Save the file as something like "z11.asf" so as not to confuse it with any other asf files.

9. Repeat this procedure for each of the talks in the workshop.

10. Once all of the changes above are completed you may run the new "mkasx.sh" file which regenerates all the HTML files for a given set of talks so that the code will function and display properly the newly edited talks.

11. Copy over to Gigavault the newly edited ASF files, placing them in the proper directory.

12. Check all the talks in Mozilla, Netscape 7.0 and IE. Make sure the slide flips are occurring.

13. If everything's working you can delete the local versions of the talks.

14. The next step will involve adding the indexing to the talks.

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